Making a living in the Roman world: the work of farmers, craftsmen, traders and shopkeepers, the heavy reliance on enslaved labour, and the contrast between the wealthy and the urban poor.

What this dot point is asking

This dot point covers how people earned a living in the Roman world: farming, craft and trade, the role of enslaved labour, and the gulf between the rich and the urban poor. Roman towns such as Pompeii give us detailed evidence of shops, workshops and bars, while the countryside fed the empire. Knowing the range of work and the contrast between wealthy landowners and ordinary workers is the heart of this topic.

Because Classical Studies is comparative, you are expected to set Roman working life against the modern world, where attitudes to work and to enslaved labour are very different. Questions are usually Describe (set out the kinds of work) or an evaluative "how far" (judge the gap between rich and poor), so learn the facts and how to weigh them.

The answer

Most Romans made their living from the land, growing grain, grapes for wine and olives for oil, since agriculture was the basis of the economy. In towns, many worked as craftsmen in small workshops, making pottery, metalwork, cloth and bread, while traders and merchants bought and sold goods through busy markets and shops. The evidence from Pompeii shows streets lined with shops and bars (thermopolia) that sold hot food and drink to the urban poor, who often had little space to cook. A great deal of the work, in homes, on farms and in businesses, was done by enslaved people. The wealthy did not do manual labour; they drew their income from large estates, rents and investments, and pursued politics and public life. The poorest citizens might depend partly on the free grain handout, the corn dole. So the kinds of work were varied, but who did the working and who lived off it divided rich from poor.

Farming, craft and trade

Farming was the foundation of Roman life and the most common way of earning a living. In the countryside, people grew the staple crops: grain for bread, grapes for wine and olives for oil, often on small farms but increasingly on large estates worked by enslaved labour. In the towns, craft and trade flourished. Skilled workers made goods in small workshops, frequently with a shop at the front, and merchants moved goods around the empire by road and sea. A town like Pompeii had bakeries, fulleries (for cleaning and making cloth), potteries and countless shops.

The role of enslaved labour

Like Greece, the Roman world depended heavily on enslaved people. They worked as domestic servants in homes, as labourers on large farming estates, as craftsmen in workshops, and in countless other roles, including educated work as tutors and clerks. This unfree labour did much of the productive work of the economy, which is one reason wealthy Romans could avoid manual work themselves. The scale of slavery shaped both the economy and attitudes to labour.

Rich and poor

The gap between rich and poor shaped working life. Wealthy Romans owned land and businesses but looked down on manual labour, living off rents and the produce of estates and devoting themselves to politics and public office. The urban poor, by contrast, worked for a living, often in trades or as casual labourers, and crowded into rented flats, relying on cheap cooked food and sometimes on the corn dole, a free grain handout that helped feed poor citizens. This sharp divide between those who owned and those who worked is exactly what an evaluative question explores.

Examples in context

A Describe question asks you to set out the ways Romans made a living, so you list facts: farming grain, grapes and olives; craft work in workshops; trade and markets; shops and bars (thermopolia); the heavy use of enslaved labour; and the wealthy living off estates while the poor relied partly on the corn dole.

A "how far" question asks how different rich and poor working lives were, so you weigh the contrast between landowning elites who avoided manual work and the labouring urban poor against the shared farming-and-trade economy beneath them, before judging the divide sharp.

Try this

Q1. What were the main crops Roman farmers grew? [2 marks]

• What the marker wants. Grain for bread, grapes for wine and olives for oil, the staples of the Roman economy.

Q2. What was a thermopolium, and who used it? [2 marks]

• What the marker wants. A shop or bar selling hot food and drink; used by the urban poor whose cramped flats often had no space to cook.

Q3. How did wealthy Romans typically gain their income? [2 marks]

• What the marker wants. From large estates, rents and investments rather than manual work, which they looked down on.

A note on sources

This guide is AI-written and not individually human-reviewed. The content follows the standard account taught for the SQA National 5 Classical Studies area Life in the Roman World; verify it against the current SQA (Qualifications Scotland) course specification and past papers at sqa.org.uk.